Organics and more

For some fun browsing, just follow this link to directories of organic farms all over the world and the internships they’re offering to frankly stronger folks than I.  Also, more tolerant of hardship, but they’re an adventurous bunch of aspiring farmers and if I were just out of college I might just join them. 

Then I simply HAD to write Find a Gardening Blog Near You.  

And Organic Gardener hired their second feature writer, known in the blog world as Commonweeder but in real life as Massachusetts gardenwriter Pat Leuchtman.  So far, Pat’s taught me about Growing Raspberries and Growing Organic Herbs.

This is the first installment of a new feature here – reporting the latest teachings of Paul James on "Gardening by the Yard," then discussing same and soliciting reader feedback.  Why?  Because he teaches my kind of gardening – sustainable, organic, all-around ecofriendly and always gardening-loving.  I’ll just be reporting the highlights, though, because not every topic he covers is of interest to me or this site. 

PAUL HEARTS FUNGI

To bring back to life a neighbor’s ailing tree, Paul drills holes all around it, then stuffs them full of compost that’s been injected with mycorrhizal fungi.  Never shy to go out on a limb, Paul proclaims: "I’m convinced that Mycorrhizal fungi represent the future of gardening.  They dramatically increases the roots’ ability to take up nutrients and fight disease."  Their use leads to "improved growth, longer life, less need for fertilizer, and healthier plants"  And he says using synthetic fertilizers is "treating your plant as though it’s some kind of botanical junkie."  Contrasted with "the natural way" with these amazing fungi.   I usually use a slightly different analogy when steering people away from synthetic fertilizers, calling them simply "steroids".   Fair?  How would you describe their effect on soils and the plants in them?

Here’s more about these fungi from the New York Botanical Garden, and the photo comes from that page.

LAWN

In a wide-ranging segment about turfgrasses, we learn that the warm season ones that Paul grows in Tulsa spread aggressively (the "I" word does spring to mind) and need to be contained somehow.  This got me wondering about the cool season grasses that are grown here in Maryland.  They do spread, but would we call them aggressive? 

I swear, half of gardening is getting our plants to grow and the other half is working even harder to control all that growth. 

Paul recommends giving lawns an inch of water once or twice every week, which seems like a lot to me.  Is that because the warm weather grasses will die without it?  I’ve always let me fescue go dormant and it’s always come back in the fall, so I don’t understand suggestions like these.  Is it because the average viewer is just not ready to embrace brown grass?

As to feeding lawns, he recommends organic fertilizers – Paul’s been pushing organics for decades – in early spring and late fall.  He says one test showed that doing that for one year reduced the crabgrass population by 75 percent.  Good one!  It’s why everyone’s telling us that the best way to deal with weeds is to have a nice thick lawn that’ll out-compete them.  But it sure runs directly counter to the romantic belief that everything’s best in our landscapes when we leave it alone, not even add fertilizer to our unsustainable turfgrasses, and just let the whole garden "do its thing."  Well, I’m one former hippie who’ll never forget the body odor that naturally results from that particular philosophy, as good as it may feel.   Bottom line: if you don’t want your "lawn" to be increasingly splotchy and weed-dominated, feed it!   Select almost any combination of  grass clippings, clover, corn gluten meal, compost or any other organic fertilizer – your choice – as long as it’s getting sufficient nitrogen to keep it thriving.

[Second of two Takoma Voice columns revealing what Jeff Gillman has to say in his The Truth about Organic Gardening, with some commentary.]

One look at the product shelves of local nurseries or even at Home Depot will tell you that green is in.  We’re in the midst of a media blitz in service of "green" garden chemicals – and that’s a good thing.  I think.  At least they’ve noticed that we care, but is "green" always good?  Caveat emptor, indeed, and the more we know about these products, the better.  So last month I covered the weed-and-feed advice in Jeff Gillman’s much-talked-about new book, The Truth about Organic Gardening, because it’s environmental information that’s science-based, not slave to any marketing labels.  This month let’s tackle the products with the potential to do the most harm – pesticides.

Preventing insect problems

First, I like Gillman’s philosophy and follow this myself: "One of my favorite ways to deal with pests is by ignoring them and concentrating on getting plants to grow as vigorously as possible."  And I’ll add: choosing the right ones.  Organics aren’t very effective at killing insects, anyway, so it’s best to focus on prevention.  He assures us that most plants can deal with the loss of about a third of their leaf area to insect damage, no problem.  And hey, don’t we want to provide for wildlife anyway?  Nature-loving gardeners these days understand how the plants they grow can contribute to wildlife, especially those songbirds we all love so much.  So more and more of us don’t mind feeding the insects that will feed the birds, as long as our plants can survive the meal.

Killing insects

There are some seriously destructive critters out there, like Japanese beetles, and if they’re in such numbers as to threaten the survival of a plant or make it look butt-ugly (to you), the first tactic is to pick them by hand and bag them or dunk them in soapy water.  Or try a good hard spray with the hose to wash them off.  Traps for Japanese beetles don’t stand up well in tests, though; they end up attracting even more insects, resulting in more damage than if they weren’t used at all. 

Beneficial insects, like ladybugs, eat the insects that damage our plants and you can buy 1,500 of them for about $20 online.  The bad news is that they usually disperse as soon as they’re released.  So the best way to have beneficial insects in your garden is to grow plants that attract them, and avoid the use of broad-spectrum insecticides, to which they’re very vulnerable.  And if you do want to try introducing some, Gillman calls the lacewing a "little-known and underutilized predator" that’s a good choice for controlling aphids, mites, and other small soft-bodied insects.  Unlike ladybugs, they’ll stay in your garden and eat the destructive insects there.  Nematodes,  little worms that eat insects from the inside out, are effective at killing Japanese beetles and can last in the soil for years, providing long-term control.  Sometimes people with Japanese-beetle-plagued plants try to kill them with a bacterial disease called milky spore, but Gillman says it fails more often than it works, with beetles developing resistance to them over time.  They’re most effective when applied to a larger area than just one yard. 
[click to continue…]

Of COURSE I know Scotts isn’t paying the Washington Post (right?) but one little item in yesterday’s Source Section did boggle the mind. 

The offending text is here, under "How  Do I Not Screw Up?" In what was otherwise a fine little piece about what plants to grow in pots, reporter Dan Zak wrote: "All plants need sunlight and water, but they also need plant food.  Basic Miracle-Gro or a comparable product will do the trick."  Dan, Dan, Dan.  Please scroll down to the previous post here and read the section about fertilizers, or consult any environmentally responsible gardening authority in the world.   And here’s a handy compilation of articles about overfertilization.

Moving on, here’s the nice part: a gallery of 4 pots planted up for different purposes.  My favorites are of coure the one by Ed Bruske – number 2, for edibles, and number 4 by Kathy Jentz, the "Tough to Kill" design.